


it all came back again

by elegantstupidity



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Arguing, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Relationship, Rained in, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-04-05 22:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19049479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/pseuds/elegantstupidity
Summary: It's not just the Upside Down that's wreaking havoc on Joyce's nerves. Unfortunately, it appears that her son and his friends are capable of doing that all on their own.Although it's the rain that keeps her and Hopper from mounting a search, it quickly becomes clear there's more than weather standing in their way.





	it all came back again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OzQueen/gifts).



“Well, maybe there wouldn’t be _all this_ _mess_ ,” Joyce muttered, mimicking Mrs. Bolling’s snooty, superior tone, “if you could actually put things back where they came from, you sanctimonious, old...”

Trailing off into indistinct grumbles, she pulled on the wheel to turn into her driveway. Even in the privacy of her own car, Joyce figured it was better not to get into the habit of talking back to customers, no matter how rude or ridiculous they’d been. Otherwise, who knew what would slip out of her mouth in a moment of weakness. Mr. Melvald might put up with a lot from her, but Joyce suspected that even he would draw the line at outright insulting someone to their face.

At least she was home now, no frustrating customers—many of whom she’d known since before she could walk—to deal with. Just a quiet night to look forward to.

A very quiet night.

Joyce parked and stared up at the still, dark house. The front window wasn’t illuminated by the glow of the TV, and the drive was conspicuously empty of both Jonathan’s car and Will’s bike. Apparently, she’d let herself get so wrapped up in rehashing her standoff with Mrs. Bolling that she’d let herself forget that this wasn’t just any other day.

With a sigh, she killed the ignition and went inside.

At 5:24, Joyce Byers stepped into her empty house. In spite of the fact that she knew no one else was home, she had to bite down on the urge to frantically call her sons’ names. Even before she set her keys down or kicked off her shoes, the dread, heavy and thick and in direct contrast to the dizzying panic that clawed at her throat, had sunk into her bones. It had taken hold before she’d even stepped inside; her heart had begun thundering away in her chest, her grip tightening on the strap of her purse, on the walk up the front steps.

Dragging in a ragged breath, Joyce silently told herself to calm down, steady her breathing the way she was supposed to, and flipped on the lights. The faint tick-tick-tick of the incandescents before they finally illuminated the empty living room wasn’t quite soothing, but it didn’t put her on edge, either. Since the mechanical clicks of the refrigerator still sometimes made her jolt, thinking the monster had come back, she'd take it as a win.

(Of course, this reaction wasn’t helped by the fact that she’d come home with Will, weak but finally all his own again, to find a dead one inside it, courtesy of one of her son’s friends, though they still hadn’t confessed who.)

It was a little better than the scene of controlled chaos that greeted her, anyway.

Will’s crayons were still mostly liberated from their box, scattered across the coffee table and, Joyce suspected, collecting dust under the couch. Jonathan’s impression was subtler, but she didn’t miss the battered corner of Beowulf sticking out from behind a cushion.

He’d argued that touring the IU campus with Nancy wouldn’t leave him much time to do his English homework, but she’d still told him to bring it with him. It was a long drive, after all. Of course, though, he had to do things his way.

The fond smile tugging at the corner of her mouth didn’t fully ease her worry. Much as she trusted Jonathan—more than anyone should have to trust her teenage son for all he’d earned it—something felt _wrong_ about him going so far away, even just for the weekend. Like, considering their family’s track record, the weekend separation might stretch into something more permanent.

(Apparently, facing off against monsters and shadowy government agencies fostered enough paranoia to finally lend some credence to all those whispers about Joyce Byers and her “fragile state of mind.” If it hadn’t been an issue of life and death, Joyce might have gotten more of a kick out of that.)

At least Will hadn’t gone anywhere. Not really. He might not be within the confines of the house, where Joyce could watch over him as fiercely as she knew how, but she’d settle for him staying within town limits.

Though, given his company (Joyce loved those kids like they were her own, but God help her, they were all trouble magnets) and the fact that they’d all been on their best behavior—and so had pent up all their reckless impulses—to ensure this two-night sleepover would really go on as planned, she supposed she couldn’t even count on that.

Joyce roused herself from her thoughts before the tangled web of worry could envelop her. She’d leave it the back of her mind, which was already thick with the cobwebs of potential disaster, but there had to be better things for her to focus on.

For starters: the disaster zone she called a living room.

It seemed unlikely that a single weekend would be enough to dislodge her deep-seated fears, particularly since she knew they were perfectly, unbelievably rational. But one weekend would be enough to tidy up. Get things in order. Well, she considered, grimacing at the mess that she had admittedly allowed to get out of hand, something close to it.

When, however, she stepped out onto the front porch a few hours later to clear her head of the lemon Pledge—well, the off-brand one Melvald’s stocked on the bottom shelf—fumes, those cobwebs were still waiting. It hadn’t snared her as she and the vacuum cleaner made their tour of the house or when she changed her sheets and finally got around to folding that load of laundry she’d done on Wednesday, but now that she’d stopped moving, stopped keeping herself and her mind busy, it proved its patience, waiting exactly where she’d left it.

The creeping sense of dread, the one that said something was going to go absolutely, horrifically wrong, and she wouldn’t be able to stop it, wasn’t quite her constant companion these days. Joyce had gotten pretty good at ignoring it, in fact. Since Eleven had shut the Gate and Will had shown no signs of the symptoms he’d experienced last year, she had hardly even felt guilty ignoring it.

When the guilt and fear did raise its head, she always had her boys and their thousand little problems around to divert her attention. If she’d known how the quiet, empty house would amplify and echo her every fear, every stray suspicion, maybe she would’ve thought twice about letting the both of them go.

And that made her awful, didn’t it? She couldn’t just keep Will and Jonathan close for her own peace of mind, no matter how practical it might actually be.

Joyce laughed, harsh enough to startle a bird out of one of the nearby trees. Its flight only made her laugh harder, hard enough to need the support of the porch railing to stay upright.

God, who would’ve thought that Hawkins, the sleepy town where she’d been born and raised, where she’d spent her entire life, would end up being far scarier than the big, wide world beyond its limits? Maybe her perspective was too narrow then, too contained for all the wild dreams she’d had as a kid, but that didn’t stop Joyce from missing it.

She missed the days when the most she had to worry about was whether her paycheck from Melvald’s would be enough to cover the mortgage, groceries, and whatever new dents or leaks had sprung up. A bit—all right, a lot—of mess was nothing compared to what the past two years had brought.

Gulping down deep breaths of fresh, spring air, Joyce tried to rein herself in, though she wasn’t entirely sure it was laughter that had her gasping now.

Her hands itched for a cigarette, but she only ever smoked when Hopper offered, and he hadn’t been around much lately. Which she completely understood, even if there was part of him now that felt more unreachable than all those years he’d been off in the city.

(Whether it was the nicotine or him that she missed more wasn’t up for consideration, and so it was the cigarette she wished for now.)

Frowning furiously out into the growing dusk, Joyce strove for actual calm. She repeated the words that usually brought her some measure of peace: “The Gate is closed. Jonathan and Will are safe. The Gate is closed. Jonathan and Will are safe.”

It didn’t work.

“C’mon,” she muttered to herself. “You’ve faced worse than a night or two alone. This is not the thing that will break you.” The words sunk in, and she had to let loose another sharp burst of laughter. “Then again, you’re already talking to yourself...”

Shaking her head and still wishing for that cigarette, even if it made her eyes water and lungs burn (maybe it really was about Hopper’s steadying presence…), she scanned the front yard once more.

Spring in Hawkins always was something to see. Even in the coming dusk, the bright green of unfurling leaves and grass—it really was getting long; she’d have to buy gas for the mower soon—was enough to make Joyce want to sit on the porch swing and will summer into existence.

Summer, all heat and bright sun, would be safe.

She sucked in another deep breath and let her eyes drift closed, willing herself to believe this one thing. If she believed enough, maybe it would come true.

Whether or not she managed it, Joyce stayed outside, soaking in the darkening night.

(With her eyes closed, she missed the rolling banks of thick, gray clouds surging in from the horizon. Sheltered by the house, she missed the way the stand of trees across the road began to sway and creak in the stiff breeze. Lemon cleaning detergent still clinging to the inside of her nose, she missed the sharp scent of rain in the air.)

How long she stood out, there, she couldn’t say. What she could say, was that she wished she came back to reality a bit more gently than she did. At least she wasn’t alone on that front, though. The chorus of frogs out in the pond across the road was momentarily cut off by the shrill ring of the phone.

It’d been months since Joyce last jumped at the sound of the phone ringing, but it was a close thing this time around. She hurried back through the front door and into the kitchen, picking up the receiver on the sixth ring.

“Hello?”

“Joyce?”

For a second, Joyce could’ve sworn her heart stopped. It picked back up and started racing as she tripped over her tongue. “Hop? Hopper? What is it? What happened?” she demanded, knowing it had to be something big for him to call.

Hopper’d never been one for checking in “just because.” And now that he wasn’t accompanying her and Will to the Lab every other week, she hardly even saw him. Not, of course, that she blamed him for that; he had Eleven and other things to worry about, now.

(He’d had Eleven to worry about this past year, too, but acknowledging that bit of information hadn’t done Joyce much good lately, so she continued to ignore it.)

He sighed down the line, and it didn’t take much imagination to see the hand he scrubbed over his jaw and mouth in her mind’s eye. Whether it was because he didn’t like being read so easily or whatever had made him call in the first place, she couldn’t say, though. The realization rankled.

“There’s a situation,” Hop finally admitted.

The words were hardly out of his mouth before Joyce was mentally cataloging her stock of supplies. She’d replaced the rifle that Will had left in the Upside Down; the new one, like the old, mostly gathered dust out in the shed, but she made sure to clean and test it every week. Cans of kerosene, stored carefully separate from the waterproof matches, also sat out there, keeping the gun company for just this eventuality. While she’d hoped that the Upside Down was done with her and her family, hope wasn’t enough to keep a monster at bay. Bullets and fire, on the other hand...

She might not know the exact details of whatever nightmare had sprung up this time, but that wasn’t going to keep her from facing it head-on.

Joyce’s hands shook anyway. She’d never done this on her own. Sure, she’d gone and strung up Christmas lights when her only clue to where her boy had gone could just as easily have been faulty wiring, but it wasn’t the same. For all she’d been ready to tear whoever took Will from her limb from limb, she’d never really thought she’d have to.

Not until the kind of monster even her worst nightmares had never managed to cook up began crawling out of her wall.

“What kind of situation?” She was already bracing for the worst—more Gates, more vines, more creatures and blood and death—but wanted the details anyway. They might not prepare her for whatever was coming, not fully, but any warning was better than none.

There was a pause Hopper might not have intended to be dramatic but made Joyce want to reach through the phone and shake him by his big, broad shoulders nonetheless.

“Hopper,” she snapped, already at the end of a fraying rope.

He sighed once more, reluctant. “Eleven’s snuck out, and my guess is she’s not the only one.”

“Snuck out? To do what?”

The idea that the Upside Down had crept back into Hawkins and these kids were trying to deal with it all on their own was, unfortunately, only all too easy to buy.

“If her note’s to be believed,” he said, “they’re going camping.”

“Camping,” Joyce repeated, at more of a loss than she would have been if he’d told her a full-scale invasion were happening below their feet.

“Apparently, she wants to try s’mores.”

Joyce couldn’t help it. She burst into loud, semi-hysterical laughter. Oh, God. It was just like them. Never mind that they’d all seen indisputable evidence that even sleepy Hawkins wasn’t safe from monsters—real, actual monsters —these kids all just tromped off into the woods for a camp out anyway. All without telling any of their parents, of course.

It wasn’t funny, not even a little bit, but Joyce couldn’t stop laughing. For the second time of the night, her stomach hurt and tears were rolling down her face, but it wouldn’t stop.

This time, it was Hopper’s turn to try and draw her out.

“Joyce?” he asked, no small measure of concern—how sick of concern, all the gentle, nosy probing and sympathetic tuts, was she? If she never had to be on the receiving end of another supposed-to-be kind smile and pitying look again, she’d consider herself lucky—in his voice.

“S’mores!” she gasped. “They wanted her to try s’mores!”

“Might be a little hard to light a fire with all the rain that’s headed our way, though.”

Right on cue, a distant boom of thunder rolled through the sky, and Joyce’s mirth died. Without even thinking it through, she was saying, “I’m on my way.”

 

* * *

 

The fact that Joyce had no idea where, exactly, she should go didn’t stop her.

She tore into the house only long enough to put on tennis shoes and grab her car keys, and then she was out the door and peeling out of the driveway in a shower of loose gravel. Of course, the rain had held off on her breakneck drive—a good thing hardly anyone else was on the roads; with her luck and the emergency stockpile of kerosene in the trunk, she was just begging for a crash—around the outskirts of town and her short tramp through the woods, but the moment she clambered out and took off between the trees, only focused on getting to Will, the first drop hit her nose.

Her lack of a coat, even when the rain began to fall in earnest, thick, cold drops that soaked her to the skin in no time at all, didn’t stop her.

She shivered her way through the woods near Dustin’s house. That was where the sleepover was meant to be, though now she had to wonder if at least one set of parents had been told she’d be hosting the festivities.

The rapid fall of night, with only the benefit of the ancient flashlight she kept in her glove compartment for emergencies didn’t stop her.

She stumbled through the quickly thickening mud, nearly running into what seems like every tree in her path and tripping over every root. Joyce isn’t going to let a little darkness, the perfectly natural kind that isn’t even sheltering nightmares, keep her from making sure Will is safe.

In the end, what stopped her was Jim.

How he’d managed to find her, appearing like some kind of ghost out of the dark, Joyce had no idea, and she was too upset with him for cutting off her search to ask.

“I will carry you out of here,” he’d threatened, leaning in close enough that Joyce could fully appreciate both the smell of his soap and the way he wasn’t above using his size and bulk to loom over her.

She hadn’t tested him, if only because she didn’t want to suffer the indignity of getting tossed over Hop’s shoulder like she was sixteen again, and he’d just hit his growth spurt and was cocky with it. She had a feeling she wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much this time around.

So, Joyce followed him. More tellingly, she ignored him all through the tramp through the woods to his truck and the ride to the cabin she’d only seen once and the past hour that they’d been there.

Even under the shelter of the cabin’s deep porch, raindrops splattered against the window. She couldn’t see a thing, but that didn’t stop Joyce from peering out into the storm, so close her breath kept fogging the window.

He’d taken her silent treatment fairly well, which didn’t exactly seem like him. Maybe a few months ( _A year_ , the traitorous part of her mind just had to remind her) with a teenager had finally taught him patience. He’d even tried to explain himself, which was another change of pace.

“In the dark, the ground turning to mud beneath our feet?” he’d said, through the flimsy door to the bathroom. (He'd insisted that he would've offered her the lone bedroom to change, except the door was stuck fast in spite of its complete lack of a lock. Joyce hadn't cared, too preoccupied with the promise of dry clothes to care where she put them on. So, she'd shucked her wet, muddy clothes for some of his spares, rolling up the cuffs and drawing the pants’ string tight to keep them on.) His tone implied that she was the crazy one for wanting to go back out. In his defense, the local weather report that had played until wind knocked out the antenna and filled the screen with snow backed him up. Roane County wasn’t subject to a flash flood warning, but the neighboring two were. “One of us would break a leg before we found them.”

Oh, Joyce could show him a broken leg.

Rather than act on her frustrations, she rubbed away the condensation on the glass and tried to see if the rain was letting up.

“Y’know,” came the voice of her long-time friend and more recent obstacle, “the forecast isn’t gonna change just because you keep glaring out the window.”

Joyce turned and leveled her glare on him.

Jim Hopper looked just as unaffected as the wind and rain outside. He smiled affably at her, that grin he used when he was talking down Mrs. O’Leary from trying to call in the National Guard when, like clockwork, her yard was TP’d and her house egged every Senior Week. (Of course, Hopper’d once been one of the seniors vandalizing the poor woman’s lawn, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him as he calmed and cajoled her into a better humor every November 1st.) It was a look that said, “I’m humoring you for now, but you’re going to realize you’re being ridiculous.”

She hated that look.

“Stop it,” she demanded, too close to stomping her foot for her liking. Hop’s eyebrows climbed his forehead, all innocence.  “They’re out there! Aren’t you worried?”

She sure as hell was.

She also knew, that underneath that placid exterior, Hopper’s mind was working a mile a minute, trying to piece together some solution they hadn’t yet tried. It had to be eating at him just as much as her that they hadn’t figured it out.

He grunted, not quite an affirmative, but not a denial, either.

Joyce would have to take it.

“Will you try the radio again?”

He frowned, like he wanted to point out that it hadn’t worked the past three times he’d tried, why would she think it’d work now? Still, he went and picked up the microphone without complaint and tapped out the same message: R-E-P-O-R-T. At this point, he didn’t even bother to check the chart to make sure he was getting all the dots and dashes in the right order.

They waited, breathless as the empty hum of the radio seemed to roar louder than the rain falling against the porch’s rusting tin roof.

Hopper gave in first. With a shake of his head, he set down the microphone. “They must be out of range. I’m they found somewhere to bunker down and wait out the storm.”

That was what anyone reasonable would do, after all.

Unfortunately, Joyce knew her son and his friends a little too well to truly believe they’d take the reasonable path. These were kids who spent their free time trying to defeat (fictional) monsters; when they’d been faced with a real one, they hadn’t run for their lives.

She couldn’t quite believe that after all he’d been through, it might be something as mundane as the weather that got her boy. Although, maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised.

It used to be that at the first hint of frost receding, she couldn’t keep Will in the house long enough to put on his parka, let alone a hat or mittens. What it was about boys and their need to be out in nature, flirting with frostbite, she’d never understood. And she probably never would now that Will rarely left the house without three layers and a few pairs of warm, dry socks.

He hadn’t complained once, but it didn’t take much to see the fear that haunted Will’s eyes with every racking pass of shudders. ( _He likes it cold._ She was never going to forget the Upside Down’s grip on her child and couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like for Will.) Joyce had quietly resigned herself to an astronomical heating bill all winter and spent the last of her paycheck and most of the Christmas tree fund to get him that new, down-filled coat from the catalog. At least he’d get plenty of use out of it. Even with the first wave of warm fronts moving through town, Will had shown no signs of putting it away for the season.

Joyce leaned heavily against the wall, letting the chill of the window seep into her back and slow her rushing pulse. The quiet pressed on her just as it had at home, but she wasn’t about to start babbling to fill it here. Not with Hopper less than subtly studying her out of the corner of his eye, no doubt keeping watch to make sure she didn’t try to dash into the storm all on her own. Filling up the ugly, plaid armchair as he did now, he couldn’t look less like a police chief, but Joyce felt like one of his suspects nonetheless.

Well, if that was the game he wanted to play, then she would play and win.

She skipped over his broad, lounging form; Joyce and Hop had known each other since they were Will’s age. The man before her might not look much like the boy she’d skipped sixth period with or the one who gave her her first beer, but he was familiar all the same.

Instead, Joyce took in the cabin’s interior, looking for insight Hopper probably wouldn't want her to have. The last time she’d been here, when she’d felt more like an exorcist than anything else, she hadn’t registered much beyond the outlets for the space heaters and the well-stocked woodpile for the fireplace. Now, with glass back in the windows and the furniture in order and the floor clear of scattered paper, she could see there was a lot to register.

For one, nothing looked like it had been made after the early 70s, like it had all come secondhand or with the cabin itself. Maybe it all did. Joyce had vague memories of Hopper going hunting with his granddad back in high school, but it wasn’t exactly something they talked about in much, or any, depth. She’d certainly never been out here before last November.

For another, come face to face with the evidence, it was impossible to ignore that it wasn’t just Hop living out here and hadn’t been for more than a year.

Eleven, whether she meant to or not, had left her mark on the space. Between the scattered textbooks—no doubt meant to help her catch up so she could start school in the fall—and the battered stack of board games in the bookshelf, Joyce couldn’t quite believe how she’d missed it. Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d had this lens into Hopper’s life last year, but she’d still seen him at least once or twice a month when he escorted her and Will to Hawkins National Lab.

How hadn’t she known he was keeping some kind of secret?

It used to be, a long time ago, that he could hardly buy new shoelaces before she knew about it.

Almost without her permission, her eyes trailed back to the man in question. He’d stopped eyeing her sidelong, though she didn’t doubt every bit of his attention was trained on her anyway. Joyce was less circumspect, though, as she’d already figured, there wasn’t much new to see.

Hopper had changed, yes, first in the years he’d been gone, and again since the Upside Down started seeping into their lives, but at his core, Joyce couldn’t believe he was all that different. He was still the brave, loyal boy she’d known, even when he frustrated her more than anyone other than Lonnie and the U.S. Department of Energy had ever managed.

His big hands deftly manipulated the stack as he shuffled them absently, a thudding whir. She wasn’t sure where he’d picked up the habit, and the realization bothered her more than she’d thought it would. There were plenty of things—details, mostly; the big picture was still there, just a little blurred—that she didn’t know about Hop, and that had never gotten to her before.

Shaking her head in frustration, she darted a glance at the front door. If she got far enough—

“Don’t make me run you down,” Hopper said, as cheerful as he’d been all night. Which was, in Joyce’s opinion, far too cheerful. “I’ll do it, but I don’t have much more in the way of dry clothes for us.”

She huffed and finally stepped further into the cabin, coming around to perch on the arm of the sofa. Goosebumps broke out over her arms as she came nearer the crackling fire. Even dry and close to warm under Hopper's over-sized flannel, the cabin could stand a little more heat. Nonetheless, Joyce didn't suggest they put the stack of space heaters to use. The rain coursing down her back and hair when she'd first come inside had been cool, but it had still dredged up memories of sweat soaking through her t-shirt as she cranked the dials up to full capacity. She didn't need the extra reminder of that night. 

Instead, pinning him with an incredulous stare, Joyce demanded, “How are you so calm? They’re out there with God knows what—”

As if he knew her personal mantra, or maybe hers wasn’t all that original in the first place, he said, “That thing is gone. It can’t get them anymore.”

“That’s what we thought the first time,” she said, quiet.

Joyce wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say to that—whether she was looking for comfort or agreement or maybe both—or how down she’d feel when she didn’t get it.

Suddenly, she was reminded of so many nights indulging Jonathan, and then Will, whenever they asked her to check under the bed for monsters. How she’d duck down and peer into the shadows, biting back a grin when the most threatening things she encountered were dust bunnies or the occasional mouse.

She probably wouldn’t have found it so funny then if she’d known the monsters were real and just a thin slice of reality away.

“They’ll be fine,” he said, less confident than Joyce would like. At her pointed look, he managed a grim grin. “If any kids could handle themselves out there, it’s them.”

It was true, but Joyce didn’t particularly like it. How much had these kids gone through that a night out in the biggest storm all spring wouldn’t even faze them?

Leg jittering up and down, she kept her gaze steady on Hopper. “How are you so calm?” That was the truly baffling part about it all. Hop’s nerves had always been stronger than hers, but this was something else. “Aren’t you worried? Or mad? I know it’s not true, but it’s like you don’t care, Hop.”

“Oh, I’m furious,” he said, enough of a quiver in his voice to convince Joyce of the truth of it. It was that quiver that warned Harry Northrup he had moments to make himself scarce at their senior Homecoming. “But what can we do? Aside from figure out exactly how long they’re all gonna be grounded when we finally find them.” He snorted and shook his head, rueful. “Considering the last time I grounded her, though, she ran off to Chicago and came back looking like some kind of Sid Vicious wannabe, I’ll have to figure out something better.”

“You’d think the year of solitary confinement would be enough,” she muttered.

The cards in Hopper’s hands went still.

“What was that?”

There was the quiver again.

Joyce shrugged, feeling uncomfortably like she’d walked into one of Hopper’s interrogations, and not as a mere observer. It was the thrum of discontent, something mean and eager to hurt, that made her look him in the eye anyway and scoff.

“C’mon, Hopper. You know it was wrong to keep her out here all by herself. Especially when her only friends thought she was as good as dead.”

“You think those kids could’ve kept a secret—”

“Me!” she broke in, exploding to her feet just as lightning flashed through the windows, like nature itself was spurring her on. “You should’ve told _me_. You should’ve told me you found her. That she came back. That she wasn’t—”

That whole year, Joyce had been torn. Torn between joy that Will was back home and safe and grief that the girl who’d found him wasn’t. They’d saved Will but couldn’t do the same for that sad, scared little girl.

(It wasn't the first time Hopper had let her heart break, and part of her worried it wouldn't be the last.)

Something in Hop’s face hardened. “We found Will. That was what mattered.”

“Because of her!” Joyce shouted, for once not bothering to hold in her emotions. Will and Jonathan weren't here to protect, and Hopper didn't deserve the same consideration. “She was the only reason we—”

Joyce had known Jim Hopper too long not to recognize the flash of regret and guilt that swept over his face. It was the same look he had when he told her he was leaving Hawkins for good. Just for a second, but it was achingly recognizable nonetheless. Her eyes narrowed, and he schooled himself back into careful blankness.

It was that blank slate that set her suspicions alight. There was something Hopper didn’t want her to know, and Joyce was damned if she’d let him hide anything else from her.

“What?” she demanded. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Joyce advanced on him, and would’ve kept coming if he hadn’t risen to his feet, looking as mad as she felt. Gone was the placid affability, the half-amused sense that he was humoring her, protecting her. Admittedly, rage was more intimidating on him, with his bulk and extra foot of height, but Joyce wasn’t about to let him push her around.

In fact.

She swiped at his chest, less a shove than a furious jab. He didn’t even have the courtesy to sway at the contact, standing tall and firm and looming over her with a scowl. Joyce scowled right back, and jabbed him again, putting all her weight behind it this time.

Joyce had never been all that shy about standing up for herself when it really mattered. She could shrug off most of the things she knew people around town said about her because it didn't. What was the point in getting mad about things that weren't true? For Will and Jonathan, though, she'd sent Lonnie packing. For her sanity, she'd clung to the belief that her boy was still alive. The urge to protect, to preserve, was as familiar to her as the cave of worry that could trap her just as effectively as the vines that had gotten hold of Will. 

The anger, though, the anger was new.

Alongside the dread that the Upside Down had planted in her was anger, though Joyce did her best to ignore its presence. The fear was familiar; fury—at Hawkins National Lab, at the monster, at the secrecy that threatened to tear her family apart—wasn't.

But now, standing toe to toe with both someone she'd trusted for the better part of her life and the knowledge that he'd lied to her, was probably  _still_ lying to her, that fury felt right. 

Jim Hopper wasn’t the only one who’d changed in the past twenty years.

Letting the full force of her tangled knot of emotions overtake her, Joyce reached out again to push, but Hopper had clearly had enough.

He caught her up, constraining her flailing fists without much effort. She still fought, trying to shove him away, keep him from seeing the frustrated tears already leaking out of her eyes. Hopper didn't let go, drawing her closer. Robbed of her one outlet—even fueled by indignation, Joyce couldn't bring herself to voice her accusations, couldn't demand answers for fear of what they might be—her rage shifted to something more familiar. Fear and shame came rushing back in, and right on their heels came the grief.

She’d been so careful over the past few months to keep it hidden away. The boys, and their friends to greater and lesser extents, needed her to keep it together. Honestly, she needed herself to keep it together.

But here, with thunder rumbling distantly through the skies, standing in the protective circle of Hopper’s—her oldest friend, the person she still trusted above anyone and everything else—arms, and the rest of the world seeming so far away, Joyce didn’t have it in her. So, she pressed her face against Hop’s chest and let her tears leak into the soft flannel of his shirt while his hands settled on her back. Only the tentative circling of his thumbs and the gentle pressure of his chin on the top of her head indicated that he knew she needed comforting at all. 

After too short a time—there were more tears that wanted to fall, but even Joyce had her limits, and standing in the arms of the man who'd always been her friend even if she thought something more might be better was one of them—she sniffed and forced herself up and out of her wallowing. Hopper’s thumbs stilled, but he didn’t move to put any distance between them, which certainly felt odd after all this time. Since he’d come back to Hawkins, he’d been all about distance, usually when it suited him most.

Then again, not all distance was physical.

In the quiet of the cabin, the rasp of his voice might as well have been thunder. “It was too risky to tell you.”

She rocked back on her heels. She didn’t go far, not with Hop’s arms still tight around her—under most other circumstances, Joyce would have been left to overanalyze that sensation for hours if not days; apparently, it wasn't just the memories that brought her teenage years right into the present—but it was enough to get a good look at him. It was impossible to keep the wounded throb out of her voice when she asked, “I’m a risk?”

Something like pain flashed over Hopper’s face, but Joyce couldn’t bring herself to regret asking the question. They’d agreed, way back when, not to keep secrets from each other anymore. As Will and his friends were so fond of saying, “Friends don’t lie.”

She must’ve said it aloud because Hopper huffed a disbelieving laugh, finally stepping away and leaving Joyce colder than when she’d first walked in. “You too, huh?”

Much as she hated to admit it, the sight of Hopper looking so tired, so resigned to her anger—to say nothing of Eleven’s—was enough to send it guttering, leaving just a thin trail of smoke and the suggestion of heat.

“You get that one a lot?”

“Only all the time,” he sighed, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm and sinking down to the couch.

“If you stopped lying, you’d hear it less,” Joyce offered, perching hesitantly next to him. They weren't touching, but that didn't keep his body heat from sinking into her skin. 

He glared at her out of the corner of his eye, and she shrugged back. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t true.

“I’m working on it,” he eventually allowed, looking unenthused by the prospect.

Joyce’s mouth quirked to the side. “Yeah? I think I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“I’m getting better. I’d’ve thought about letting them camp out in the hunting blind if she’d bothered to ask.”

“Hunting blind?” she asked, only picturing Jonathan’s distraught, haunted face the single time she’d let Lonnie take him hunting. Joyce had never bothered to accompany her dad and uncles on their trips, but what she knew about them meant she doubted a blind would be high up on any kid’s ideal list of campsites.

“Yeah, we started putting it together when Owens said it’d be another year before she could be out in public.” He looked at her sidelong again. “We both knew she’d bust out before the month was up, so we compromised. Built a platform up in one of the big oaks out back.”

“You want them to hide up a tree during a thunderstorm?” she pointed out, unimpressed. He rolled his eyes, but she’d already moved on, his description catching up with her. “You built her a treehouse?”

“A blind,” he corrected, frowning. “As she’s made very clear, she doesn’t exactly love being cooped up in here all day.”

His shoulders tensed, like he was just waiting for her to jump back on the topic, but Joyce had had enough arguing for one lifetime; being married to Lonnie Byers did that to people.

“It sounds nice,” she said. “She likes it up there?”

“She can see part of the town, at least. Seems to like the birds, especially now that it’s more than just sparrows and cardinals.”

There was a warmth to his voice now, a slight upturn of his lips, that had nothing to do with the role he played on the job. Hopper might have most of Hawkins fooled, but Joyce knew when he was playing nice—when it suited him, which was most of the time—and when he really meant it—hardly ever. 

Joyce was sure that if she prodded, she could get him to spill everything he loved about this girl who’d become his second chance at a family.

Before she could open her mouth, though, the radio suddenly buzzed to life.

Hopper’s faint smile turned to a flat line of concentration as he took in and mentally sorted through the long string of beeps. She could hardly parse out the dots from the dashes, but thankfully, he seemed to have it handled.

After a few moments, the tension in his jaw eased. “It sounds like they made it to the junkyard and holed up out there. Nothing worse than a bit of a soaking,” he added when she opened her mouth to ask.

Why the kids had only now bothered to check in or what the hell had kept their radios from working earlier, Joyce had no idea. But now that she had proof Will was safe, all the adrenaline, all the fear that had kept her going rushed out of her like air from a balloon. She slumped back against the couch, her eyes closing.

Her respite was brief. Clambering to her feet, knowing it would only get harder the longer she put it off, Joyce started for the door. It was time for her to go home.

Another crack of thunder made her pause. 

While she didn’t exactly relish the thought of making him take her back to her car, to say nothing of whether or not the wheels would be mired in mud deep enough to make them do nothing more than spin ineffectually, it wasn’t like she could stay here. She'd said too much tonight, had acknowledged too many emotions she'd long ignored; who was to say another wouldn't come bursting out?

As if he could read her mind and couldn't at the same time, Hopper said, “I'm not driving you back to your car, and you can't take the truck.”

Joyce’s lips pursed, and he rose once again to join her. Now, his height felt different than it had when she’d been so furious with him. It didn't make her want to prove anything, just made her feel small. Delicate in a way that had nothing to do with the things her neighbors and coworkers thought of her.

It maybe had something to do with the way he was looking at her, though.

She broke eye contact first, and he cleared his throat. “You take the bed.” Hopper gestured at the narrow cot set against one of the walls, the little brick fireplace right at its foot. Across the room, the only solid door in the cabin still stood firmly shut. Either Eleven's powers were still growing or she'd learned how to wedge a chair under the handle before climbing out the window. Whatever the case, it appeared her bedroom was off limits until she returned.

Joyce eyed the length of the couch, closer to a loveseat, doubtfully. When she caught Hop’s eye, he just shrugged.

“I’ve slept on worse.”

She didn’t doubt it. Still, it was bad enough that Will and El and the rest of the kids were sleeping rough tonight. Hopper didn’t have to join in.

“Don’t be stubborn,” she told him, earning a snort. She reached out and gave his shirt a little tug, and maybe that wasn’t playing fair. For which of them, Joyce couldn't say around the fluttering in her stomach, but it got results. Haltingly, Hopper followed her closer to the bed, reaching out to flick off the light switch as they went. The cabin went dark, and the only thing grounding her was her fist full of flannel and the man wearing it.

“Joyce—” he said, low voice thick with something Joyce wouldn't dare name.

“It’s just for the night.”

“Yeah,” he said, swallowing down whatever else it was he wanted to say. “For the night.”

They didn’t speak as they situated themselves, Hopper climbing in first to hug the wall and Joyce taking whatever space was left. There wasn’t much. They were pressed together, even with them both on their sides, facing each other.

She wanted to squirm, it felt so intimate. Too intimate. Of course, moving at all would only put even more of her body, already wrapped up in Hopper’s clothes, in contact with his. She didn't think she could take that.

“Go to sleep, Joyce,” he murmured, his voice a caress she wasn’t sure if she wanted to lean into or run from, as far and fast as she could.

“Once you stop staring.”

“Yeah, okay.”

His eyes didn’t close, though. Joyce frowned, and he laughed, low enough to rumble like the thunder outside. At least the windows didn’t rattle in their frames.

Joyce couldn’t quite say the same for her heart in her chest.

They lay close enough together that she was sure he could feel the wild thrum of it, though his own didn’t bridge the scant gap. Part of her, the part that she didn’t often listen to, wondered what she’d hear if she tucked her head under his chin and laid her ear against him.

She went right on tuning that voice out, letting her eyes drift shut under the weight of Hopper’s gaze.

He chuckled again, and she was warm. Warmer than she liked, but there wasn’t much about this situation that she did like.

At least, that was what she told herself even as she drifted easily into sleep.


End file.
